My name is Mary Haga. On many mornings, you would find me looking very much like the lady on my pages. Oh, the joys of retirement! (Well, only sometimes, since I work part-time.)

I am a native Virginian who spent 31 years teaching third grade in a rural Virginia public school system. The first 26 years were spent teaching in a primary school with only grades K - 3. The last few years were spent in a K - 6 situation due to the closing of some older schools and the building of new ones. I must say that I preferred the primary school setting. Having older students around made the whole school climate different.

During the last 15 years of my public school teaching experience, I had the use of a computer in my classroom, first an Apple IIe and more recently PCs. I have enjoyed the computer for my own personal use as well as showing children what they could accomplish by using the computer. There sure have been a lot of changes since the days of the Apple IIe. I also had the opportunity to train other teachers in the use of computers.

I have continued to teach, but not in the public school. I am working for a private computer school. Most of my workday is spent working with preschool or school-aged children on computers. As this is an enrichment experience for them, it is a pure teaching experience for me. There are none of the record-keeping, meetings, and other non-teaching chores that burned me out as a classroom teacher. This job is a joy!

My major reason for starting this website was to learn how to do it. (Have to keep the old brain working...use it or lose it!) I hope that teachers have found my site useful. But it has been nearly ten years since I retired from teaching in the public schools. I have moved on to other interests and have not stayed current with what is happening in American education. Since I have not kept up with current educational trends, I no longer feel qualified to offer advice.

Many of the pages on Teachers' Mentor required frequent link checks and updating. I fell way behind in doing this. These pages have been removed. There are many current and frequently updated sites that can better provide the same information.

But some articles on the site continue to draw many visitors. These pages will still be available for anyone who cares to read them. These articles are listed in the right column on the home page. All current links anyone may have to these pages should still work. As long as visitors continue to find something useful in the articles and I can afford to pay the monthly fee, I will leave the site up.

Good luck to all of you who still work daily in the classroom. Our children are counting on you!

Mary
February, 2009

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